/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.

In movies, when bank robbers and gangsters grumble, “I’m never going back to jail, they’ll have to kill me,” the statement does not uniformly rule out visiting peers who are incarcerated. On the other side of the glass, a visit can be a sobering reminder against surrender, and a satisfying reassurance of dominance to the criminal mind—”Better him than me”—all the while keeping the enemy close. Walter White has never served a prison sentence, but he’s weathered a death sentence as a patient confined to a hospital. The time served there, the loss of freedom and control over his life, forever skewed his outlook on mortality and morality. The hospital is a sort of prison in Walter’s psyche, and in season three, he seems to gain an introspective satisfaction in visiting others there—standing over their beds, his hand—or in the enemy’s case his eyes—on theirs.

Episode seven, and especially episode eight, entitled “I See You” (a play on the acronym for “intensive care unit”) demonstrate how smoothly Walt operates in this setting when he’s not the patient. “I hide in plain site, same as you,” Gus Fring tells him. And in this episode, Walt is never far from a character who is bruised, bloodied, unconscious, emotionally scarred or confused, characters snagged directly or indirectly in the wrath of Walt’s crimes, and thus weaker than him. The hospital scenes in “I See You” are an affirmation for Walt of a reality in which he’s the patriarch of survival, his facade the armor.

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/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.

With “One Minute,” the most engrossing arc of the third season has landed in Hank‘s lap like a decapitated, shrunken head exported from Juarez. And with five episodes left before the finale—should we begin deciphering ep titles like last year?—it will be difficult to surpass the shock of the bloody, unsettling ending here. “I swear to god Marie, the universe is trying to tell me something, and I’m finally ready to listen.” “One Minute” is the second consecutive episode where a mysterious phone call launches Hank’s life down a menacing pinball alley (ruled by fate or chaos?). But unlike last time, we’re unsure over who exactly was on the other line. We also received an origins story for the Cousins of Death, and finally learned the duo’s beer-bobbing Christian names: Leonel and Marco. And in a sign of future grisly decision making, Saul Goodman laid out a not-so-last resort for Walt.

/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.

This is my own private domicile. I will not be harassed, bitch!” – Jesse Pinkman

From an opening shot of two blazers belonging to the Cousins of Death hanging on a clothesline against a glaring desert “Sunset,” the sixth episode was imbued with the showdowns and imagery of a modern Western. The structure was free of flashbacks and high on pressure-cooker drama, with no less than three showdowns, the most memorable of which saw Walt and Jesse unexpectedly mourn a great, unsung character of sorts. And the season continued to focus on Hank’s wellbeing and search for self, the loner sheriff to Jesse and Walt’s bickering cocksure outlaws. Between the panic attacks, the fast food stakeouts, and a strenuous, ever-lonely professional and domestic life: will Hank break before he breaks the case of his life?Read More »

/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. For this installment, /Film discourses with Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a sharp-witted, caps-friendly writer at The Awl and author of the new book Mad Men Unbuttoned, due this July from HarperStudio. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recap and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.

Hunter Stephenson: Before we discuss the hell-tinted game-changer that was “Mas,” tell me where Walter White resides in your obsession with masculine anti-heroes in current TV and film. What does Breaking Bad tell us about the state of the modern man?

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: Walter White, thanks to magnificent Bryan Cranston, has quickly ascended into the highest echelon of beloved Manly Men Who Do Bad Things. He is Sopranos status for me. I think what White has—what you see echoed in characters like Don Draper, Tony Soprano, Jim McNulty—is fragmented existence. In their professional lives these men are the masters of their craft and at home they are considered failures.

/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.

In previous recaps, I have discussed the slower pace and subdued tone of season three, and several Slash readers have noticed the slight change as well. The initial episodes haven’t been subpar or boring, but for the non-diehards and for curious surfers, I imagine Walter White‘s broodiness and the larger-than-life, some have argued “cartoonish,” enigma of the Cousins is off-putting. But overall, the season’s kick-off is realistic. Figurative dust continues to settle after season two’s finale, and several main characters have used the shadow of tragedy to privately search and await a sign, an epiphany, or any justification to grasp at what he or she selfishly desires most.

Aptly titled, “Green Light,” the fourth episode shoves these characters’ ambitions and longings forward, and fans may have noticed the writers lacing the ep with the humor and foreshadowing that hooked us back when Walt still had hair/manners. After the jump, I’ll cease saying anything further about next week’s episode, but I will say it’s even better than “Green Light.” Season three’s slow burn is about to ignite into a highway to hell. (Yay?)

/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads and readers’ thoughts welcome. For previous recaps, click here.

The third episode of the third season, “I.F.T.” continues the series’ slow burn this year and we have to admit, the percolating (and/or slightly tedious?) tension has us counting the days until death knocks on someone’s door. It was an ep highlighting connections and inevitable reveals. Until the final seconds, the meaning of the titular acronym rained a mystery—and when viewers figured it out, I’m pretty sure Walter White was considering a revision to his “honesty is good” policy. Or perhaps he simply reacted by storming out for a signature bender in his tighty-whities.

Other reveals dealt with the degrees of separation between the Cousins of Death and a pivotal character from the series’ past, and an unexpected flashback on Danny Trejo’s thug.

/Film will be recapping and discussing each episode of the third season of Breaking Bad. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for the recaps and for the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous recaps, click here.

“You see I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name. It felt good to be out of the rain.”

Walter White became a drug dealer to aggressively restore control over his life and the fate of his family after being diagnosed with cancer. The first two episodes of the third season have, unbeknownst to him, introduced a vengeful, eerily superstitious enemy spurred by this decision. It’s not the first time Walter White has faced violent opposition, but it’s the first time the severity has been emphasized using skulls, voodoo offerings, a black Mercedes, and a Ouija board. By now we’ve also learned to pay attention to episode titles, and “Caballo Sin Nombre,” or “Horse with No Name,” is no different.

/Film will be recapping episodes for the third season of Breaking Bad, starting with last Sunday’s premiere. A spoiler warning applies after the jump for every recap and the comments section. Meth heads welcome. For previous write-ups on the second and third season of Breaking Bad, click here.

Sunday’s premiere, entitled “No Mas,” was a subdued affair save for multiple homicides and a nightmarish undercurrent that ran throughout. Series creator, Vince Gilligan, didn’t feel the need for a time jump, so we find Walter White worse for wear in the aftermath of season two’s finale. Now sporting a much thicker goatee, it’s the first time in the series that he looks less like a cancer patient than a hardboiled criminal off The Wire. “No Mas” also marks the second ep directed by star Bryan Cranston and he immediately introduces us to a pair of nameless, relentless, and nearly identical thugs, shown above.

With no exposition, in minutes the duo comes to represent the unbelievable, escalating real life wrath of drug cartels in Mexico and these cartels’ common belief in the skull-headed deity of Santa Muerte. If you’re unfamiliar with the chaos happening in the country, check out this recent editorial by journalist Charles Bowden. Something tells us the third season of Breaking Bad will thoroughly address the gruesome “life is cheap” realities of Mexico’s drug trade, after foreshadowing them with the classic tortoise scene last year.